Condoleezza Rice: Putin will not let Wagner Chief live

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So you can stop running yourself in circles and start concentrating on the important things, like deciding what's for lunch. Visit your nearest location or office.fedex.com to get started. FedEx Office. I think he knows full well that his future is dependent on what happens in Ukraine. I don't see him admitting that he made a terrible mistake here and pulled all his troops out. Certainly there's insiders and elites that probably unlikely have come to that conclusion, but they're not going to say that publicly.

I think Putin is going to stay in the fight because he realizes his survival and his regime survival is tied to it. So that's General Jack Keane doing some instant analysis on the fast-developing news over the weekend, but there's nobody better in the country to talk to than who's in our studio right now. If you're smart enough to get Fox Nation, you see the former Secretary of State, the 66th Secretary of State of the United States, Condoleezza Rice.

Now she's running everything at the Hoover Institute and a senior fellow on public policy. Great to see you. Nice to see you too. It was so nice of you to give us some time and how fortuitous for me that this Russia... What a day. Out of everything that you've studied, that was your focus in college and your master's, Soviet Union.

And then it fell apart and made it a little bit more challenging. So your thoughts about what took place over the weekend, the biggest surprise for you? Well, the biggest surprise for me is that if our intelligence agencies knew something was brewing among the Wagner group, and apparently we did, then the Russians must have known too that something was brewing.

They have molds inside of all of these groups. Why didn't they do something to head it off? Why did it get to the point that you had progression on social media and on television talking about marching on Moscow? And how bad a war this is.

There are no Nazis here. Right. Well, that's probably the most damaging thing that he did is Putin has had this narrative that this is a just and necessary war because of the West and the Nazis and Ukraine and so forth. And Prigozhin, one of his closest allies, just blew that up and said, no, we could have negotiated with our brothers in Ukraine.

We didn't have to lose all of these people. And now Putin needs to answer for that, too, because that's been an unspoken view all around Moscow. Putin started this war thinking it would be over in five days. It would never touch the lives of people in Moscow.

It's touching the lives of people in Moscow big time now. And he hasn't been able to now hold on to this fiction that this was a just war. And don't you think, Madam Secretary, that if Vladimir Putin wanted to show strength and could, he would. We haven't seen him since Saturday morning. He went to St. Petersburg when the attack took place. And then he goes, now today, we're looking at Monday, time zone adjusted, nothing.

We just have some statement put out that a couple of countries still recognize Vladimir Putin, a missive of support from China. You've met him. Would you? How would you characterize what the guy you know from how he's acting? Well, he has always been or had always been confident. He wanted to have an air of invincibility. He was the only option for the Russian people. And this is an incredibly weak response, first of all, to make the deal. After you've said that this was treason, you were going to have these criminals pay, etc., etc. And then you make a deal to let Prigozhin go to Belarus. By the way, if I were Prigozhin, I'd be careful about open windows.

And I'd be careful about anything that might taste slightly metallic. Putin will not, I think, let Prigozhin live for terribly long because he remains a threat as long as he's alive. But the other thing that I have to say about this is, yes, where is Putin? I suspect they're trying to get their act together. They're trying to figure out what is the explanation for having made this deal. But the longer that he doesn't speak to it, the more social media and the chatter in Moscow is really overwhelming everything.

And he's losing control of the narrative. And I'm sure you saw how the Wagner group was achieved in Roskop. And then through the towns as they just move through all of them, they shoot down three choppers, and they just stop 175 or 200 miles from Moscow. So we know that already.

But my sense is this. If he does go to Belarus, I'm sure he's got his guys with him to a degree, don't you think? I'm sure he does. But Vladimir Putin has shown the incredible ability to hunt down his enemies.

And so I think he will. I just can't believe... The best guys in the country seem to be on the Wagner group. Well, the Wagner group is spread out around the world. Remember, they've got people in Syria, they've got people in Africa. And so a lot of these Wagner group folks who were fighting, soldiers who were fighting in Ukraine, were prisoners who were taken out of the prisons and put forward. They're fierce, and they are brutal.

But how good they are, I don't know. I just think that for Putin, this is chapter one. He effectively lost chapter one. Now he's got to figure out how he wins the next one.

And here I completely agree with Joaquin. The last thing he can do is say, well, yes, they're right, the war in Ukraine was a mistake. Ukraine war now is the war that could make him Nicholas I. Now, who was Nicholas I? He was the Tsar that lost the Crimean War and started the downward slide of the Russian Empire. And so with all of his history, and he is a history buff, with all of his history in his mind... You know, Brian, he once told me, the only time Russia has been great is when it's been ruled by great men like Peter the Great and Alexander the Second.

That's who he thought he was. He's in great danger now of just being a failed Tsar, and that's got to worry him. Sometimes I think, you know, he looks back, he was part of the G7, G8.

He was part of the family of nations. People were trying to get him going economically. You know, you look at Bill Browder, who's just with Hermitage Capital, they kill McGinsky and all these things.

He goes, yeah, we were all over there making money. We thought they were making a sincere effort towards a degree of capitalism. At one point, somehow either he changed or his objectives were never as they appeared. Well, he certainly was a nationalist from the very beginning. I think once the Soviet Union collapsed as a young KGB officer, he was humiliated by that. He decided eventually he'd get to rebuild the Russian Empire.

That, I think, was there. I do think that he valued his role in the world. I remember, Brian, when he made all of us, the President of the United States, the Chancellor of Germany, come to the 300th celebration of the founding of St. Petersburg, and it was this huge thing with, you know, people spray painted gold.

He loved being on the international stage. He's now turning his country into a large North Korea, back at the borders of Peter the Great. This is why you're hearing these, well, Qatar supports us, China supports us, because he's still trying to have that image that he matters in international politics. Right, and one thing they did is something that Trump wasn't able to do, get them off, get them off free cheap Russian oil and gas. Nordstrom 1 is now blown up and Nordstrom 2 will never happen, even though Joe Biden had given in and said, well, it's almost done anyway.

I'm just going to share this with you. The main intelligence directorate of the Ukraine reported that Russia is considering an attack on the Zaporizhny nuclear power plant. Russia's troops have turned the planet to a heavily fortified military base.

The reactor's cooling system is mined, so we'll see if they try to change the subject. But how do you feel, Condi, about us getting the attack they need, the F-16s they asked for, and stop fearing escalation? They started this war. We can't lose it. The Ukraine can't lose it.

Brian, you're absolutely right. I've said all along that I think the Biden administration has done the right things too slowly. So instead of anticipating that the Ukrainians were going to need air defenses, we waited until the Russians were using the slow tax. Said no patriot, then gave them patriots. We said no tanks, then gave them tanks.

Now it's aircraft, fighter aircraft. Oh, well, now we'll give them to them. So we've not anticipated what was coming and been all in in giving equipment to Ukraine.

It's time to really double down. And by the way, I just want to say this to the internal debate in the United States. Anybody who thinks that now the United States supporting Ukraine all out is the wrong policy just has to look at what's happening in Russia today.

This is an historic moment for the world. If you want to teach Xi Jinping a lesson about Western power, about the ability to control events in the international system, if you want to say, oh, by the way, Afghanistan, yes, that humiliation in Afghanistan, forget about that. Look at what we're doing in Ukraine. If you want to say NATO is stronger with Finland and Sweden, this is our moment.

Don't back down now. But the problem is the president of the United States doesn't explain it, why it matters to the U.S. And one thing about you guys, you say constantly, this is what Iraq means. This is what it could mean. I don't care where you stand on it. We had an explanation, but I feel like General Jack Keane and Lindsey Graham are doing a better job explaining why it's important than the president, secretary of state, because this is what it means to the West.

I thought Jack Keane put it perfect. By using 5% of our military budget, we have degraded Russia over 50%. It's probably over that. And on their choice, they're one of our chief enemies in the world. And we've knocked a hole in the relationship without limits between Xi Jinping and Putin. You know, when people say, well, we should be concentrating on China. Well, this gives us a lot of leverage also in reminding China that the United States and its allies can be quite formidable. And oh, by the way, Ukrainians aren't asking for American boots on the ground. They're asking us to give them the equipment to fight this fight.

Right. And they're trying to blow up hospitals and kill civilians because they can't beat the Ukrainian war. Lastly, is the State Department capable of facing down China all around the world with this Belt and Road program? Shouldn't they be fanned out in Guatemala? Shouldn't they be fanned out in Brazil and in Colombia and throughout Africa and provide an alternative?

Empty that building. Get these people out to let them know we're not looking to extort you. We're looking to support you and what the Belt and Road program is. This can't be a one person job.

And that vision's got to be explained, don't you think? We need to be much more active in this way because the Chinese are not actually giving these people a very good deal. They get a lot of debt. And if they can't pay it back, the Chinese claim the port.

We have a much better deal. We will help you build an economy where you will get jobs for your people, where there will be foreign investment, where your economy will grow. We did something like this in the Bush administration when we gave lots of assistance through the Millennium Challenge Corporation to countries to build their economies. And oh, by the way, the President's emergency plan for AIDS relief, which saved 25 million lives, that's still something that is greatly appreciated in Africa. America, when it leads with power, compassion and creativity, China will be no match. But you're right, we are not out there in the way that we need to be, particularly, by the way, in places like Latin America, which are in our backyard.

Right. And we can't ignore the great chance to reprogram our manufacturing. I don't want to get you involved in politics that will be demeaning you, but for the most part, what concerns you most about the state of our country right now? What concerns me most about the state of the country right now is that Americans are losing faith in their own institutions. Our founding fathers gave us the greatest institutions ever bequeathed to humankind.

I mean, they're remarkable. And yet you have people who want to say those institutions are elitist and they're not for you. And we have others who say, oh, they're soiled by slavery and so don't believe in them. We have young people, and I teach some of them, who don't actually know the difference between socialism and capitalism.

And so they say, well, socialism doesn't sound so bad. We're doing a terrible job, Brian, of telling the American story, of telling the possibilities of the American story to bring yourself from whatever circumstances you have in life to better circumstances. Our educational system is failing our poorest kids. We've just seen these reports of what's happening to math scores and to English scores.

For the people that need it most, for the disadvantaged communities. What worries me most is what we're doing to ourselves. We need to refocus again on America's promise. Fixable?

Fixable. But we've got to start doing it, and we've got to challenge those who say that America is not a land of opportunity. What greater land of opportunity is there on the earth? And you're somebody who grew up in the segregated south, and you feel that way. I grew up in the segregated south. I don't look at America with rose colored glasses, but I'll tell you something.

I've been all over the world. Nobody deals better with difference than the United States of America. Nobody gives opportunity to those who are different like the United States of America. And it's the reason we are the great country that we are, is that despite our history, despite all of the problems that we've had in our history, we keep working brick by brick, step by step, to make we the people a more inclusive concept. And we've done a lot, we've got more to do, but I just, I really reject the idea that this is not the land of opportunity. And I get worried selling the 250 years that America has passed, that we're not going to celebrate it. It's only a couple years away.

Yes. Mr. Secretary, thanks so much for coming in. It's always great to see you. Great to be with you. I could have had a professor like you over, I could have gotten into Stanford with my grades.

That was the problem. Great to see you. Great to see you too, Brian.